Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(24)

“Or in your case,” I said, “everything.”

“Lot of good it did me,” she said. “I still don’t know my own name.”

“Yeah,” Greer said. “That’s because—”

“Card already told me.”

Greer sputtered. The girl and I shared a hint of a smile before she turned again and slid a yearbook off one of the stacks. “So where did you two go to school?”

“Black River High,” Greer said. “The school for weirdoes, morons, and troublemakers.”

“Oh yeah? Which of those were you?”

“All of the above, probably.”

“You don’t know?”

Greer shook his head.

“But if you’re so great at figuring out who people are, how come you don’t know who you are?”

“We were able to figure out his name,” I said. “But that was it.”

Greer closed a book and opened another. “We know that me and the birdman here went to the same school. But we didn’t know each other. And apparently everyone I did know is either infected, dead, or on the other side of that fence.”

“But couldn’t you just—”

“We better get back to it,” I said. “Right, Greer?”

“Right. Sorry. You two hush. Work to do.”

He leaned over his books. The girl left him alone, moving across the meadow to sit closer to me. I was backlit by the sun, so she raised her hand to shield her eyes, which cast a little mask of shadow across her face.

“So there’ll be a picture of me in one of those? And my name?”

I picked a blade of grass and wound it around a fingertip. “That’s the idea. But there are thousands of pictures, so knowing more about you narrows things down. Like for you, Greer will probably be looking at academic clubs, student government, library assistants.”

“Nerd stuff!” Greer called out. “Somewhere in this stack I bet there’s a picture of you and Card at some interschool dweeb mixer.”

She laughed, which made her nose wrinkle prettily. “So you’re a nerd too, huh?”

I shrugged. “Guess so. But I’m a sci-fi slash comic book nerd. Looks like you’re more of an academic nerd.”

“So if we met, we would’ve had to fight to the death.”

“Probably.”

The girl smiled again. It was like this weird drug. Every time I saw it, I tried to think of ways I could get her to do it again.

“Oh hey,” I called out to Greer. “You should also check band. Jazz band maybe.”

“Good thinking!”

“What? Why band?”

“You’re a musician,” I said. “You play guitar anyway.”

“I do? How do you know that?”

I started to reach for her hand but pulled away at the last second. I pointed instead.

“Those calluses on your fingertips. You got them from holding down the strings of a guitar.”

She held her fingers up before her eyes. “I was wondering where those came from.”

“We’ve seen it before,” I said. “Astrid plays a little too. Her calluses were fainter, though. Looks like you’ve been doing it longer.”

“So wait, if I picked up a guitar right now . . .”

“You’d be able to play,” I said. “Whole songs you wouldn’t even remember learning.”

“That is just . . . spooky.”

“A lot of this is,” I said. “You’ll get used to it.”

Greer raised his voice again. “Hush, nerds!”

The girl got up and moved closer, stretching out on the grass in front of me. She was right on the line of too close, but I didn’t move. I watched as she picked dandelions and gathered them into a bunch.

“I was wondering,” she said. “Why did we stay? I mean, if my family and I weren’t infected, why wouldn’t we have just left?”

“Most everybody thought a cure was right around the corner,” I said. “And when it wasn’t, I don’t know, I guess some had relatives who were infected and they didn’t want to leave them. Others wanted to keep their eye on their houses or businesses or whatever. Maybe some people just didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Which one of those were you?”

Her eyes moved up and over the contours of my mask.

“I mean, you’re not infected, right?”

I nodded.

“So why’d you stay?”

My face felt like it was burning. I scrambled for an answer, but then, just over her shoulder, I saw Greer slam a book shut and toss it aside.

“What’s up, Greer?”

The girl turned around. “What’s wrong?”

He was running his palm back and forth over the stubble on his head. “Nothing. It’s just . . . you definitely weren’t at Edwards, so I was thinking Perkins, but . . . sorry. It’s tricky, since you probably looked a lot different then.”

She returned to Greer’s side. It was a little disappointing to have her suddenly gone. I watched from my spot as he went through one of the books a second time. When he came to the final page, he went back through St. Edwards and then all the others, one by one. After that he reached into the cardboard box and pulled out a sheaf of papers.